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Think, I warned myself. Don’t panic. Heart pulsing, throat dry, I waited for my brain to clear, for the sound to come again. My husband Tom was out of town. Even when he’s at home, noise rarely interrupts his slumber. Tom is a big hulking cop, and isn’t afraid of much. I shifted in the chilled sheets. The temperature outside was close to zero. Frigid air poured through tiny leaks in our bedroom windows. The noise had come from outdoors, from below, of that I was fairly certain. Now all was quiet.

What friend can you call at four-thirty in the morning, to ask for refuge and a large kitchen? During the current remodeling of her guest bedroom, my best friend Marla Korman—who always claimed that the Jerk had married her for her inherited fortune, which she’d refused to share with him during their brief marriage—had staked out a suite at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel. I knew Marla would have welcomed me, even at that ungodly morning hour. But the sixty-five-minute trip back from downtown Denver to Aspen Meadow, to cater at Hyde Chapel between ferrying Arch to and from school, was simply not feasible.

Those gates, bearing the Hyde coat of arms and several other painted shields Sukie had unearthed in a Denver antique shop, had been open when I’d visited three weeks ago. Were they electronically armed before sunup? I had no idea. I stared again at the bank’s digital clock. The van was becoming warm. If I waited too long, the cooked chicken would begin to spoil. After the first question of catering: How does the food look? there is always the second consideration: How does it hold up? Because you were never going to get to the third question: How does it taste?